Archive for the ‘Social Media Experiment’ Category

Last year about this time I announced that 2011 was to be my year to dive into social media.

Here’s my grade for the year: Incomplete.

In retrospect, it’s no big surprise. Even getting from toe-in-the-water to knee-deep took a significant effort. The deeper I got, the more I began to grasp the depths of what I didn’t know. And then there’s the matter of constant change in the social media world—you learn one thing and four new things pop up.

I count as my accomplishments for 2011:

Launched my blog in earnest

Increased use of Facebook and LinkedIn, including connecting my blog posts to these sites

Opened a Twitter account and have a few followers, though I don’t tweet nearly enough to enough people, nor interact with people who I follow

Have a YouTube channel and have posted a few videos

Started a Google + page but have only a very small circle (Hello Elliot, Anabel and Bernie Sanders)

Played around with MerchantCircle

Just began to explore Pinterest

Joined 20 or so LinkedIn or Yahoo groups and have contributed to the conversation in many of them

Received countless e-letters devoted to social media and attended several on-line presentations on the subject

I still have a lot to learn and do better. I will have to commit to SEO tactics for raising my profile. I need to grow and better integrate my social media efforts with each other and with other marketing tactics to make a bigger impact. I must create (useful) content even more regularly.

I need to do all of this, without spending so much time, money and other resources that I have little left for doing the work that’s suppose to come from the effort.

But bottom line in my social media journey is that I need to be more social. That’s my challenge.

Nation…Recently, I finished Stephen Colbert’s book, I am America (And So Can You!) Like Mr. Colbert, I’m no fan of reading books, but this one has a lot of pictures, so I made the exception. It has a lot of opinions, too. And I am a big fan of opinions, because if there is one thing I’m absolutely certain of, it’s my opinions. (My opinions, death and taxes.)

It’s my opinion that we can learn about brand building by watching Mr. Colbert. Here is a man who has been able to match his not-so-hidden agenda—Mission, Vision, Values and Purpose—so purely to his powerfully cohesive Look, Message and Actions. What is his agenda, you ask? (I’ll ask for you.) My opinion tells me that his agenda clearly is to realize a world driven by the free market so that he can use his self-promotion talents to build his power-base and monetize his fame. (Who wouldn’t want this?)

Let’s start with the Look. He is consistent: Dark suit, white shirt, power tie, wire-rim glasses, and well-coiffed mane (nice job of hiding the gray, sir)—the uniform of a free-market zealot. The Look is reinforced on his website, over and over again in his book and at his public appearances. He only varies it to prove a point, which makes that point all the more noticeable and powerful. For example, when he went to Iraq, he wore camouflage and got his head shaved. This proved the point regarding his unequivocal support of the troops. (Also made the point that he looks better with longer hair.) Then every night thereafter, when we saw him with short hair, we were powerfully reminded of the point he made when he had it shaved. (Short hair takes awhile to grow back.)

Next, let’s examine his Message. Again, he’s consistent both in content and in tone (and by content and tone I mean so close to the edge of satire that you might even think he leans to the left). Free market… support of the Republican agenda…doesn’t see race…doesn’t read books…afraid of bears…believes in a Christian nation…a mistrust of science are all familiar themes (and by familiar I mean excrutiatingly monotonous.) We know where Stephan Colbert stands. (In high regard with his banker.)

And his Actions match his Look and Message. He walks the talk (pays illegal immigrant to walk; he just talks). He puts people on notice, points out threats, give a tip of his hat or wag of his finger, challenges all his interview guests with his right-wing perspective (pistols at dawn might be easier) and otherwise offers his opinions unabashedly. (To his guests it may seem to be more bashedly).

How do you measure the success of the Colbert brand? His Facebook page has nearly 2,000,000 fans. His show is immensely popular, he spoke at the White House Correspondent Dinner, His book was on top of the New York Times Bestseller’s List, and by his own admission, Stephan is incredibly wealthy.

I choose to measure it by the impressive (in its odd range) list of other “brands” that wanted to affiliate with Stephan to receive his famous bump. From his website:

Colbert has literally made a name for himself with “The Colbert Report.” The following have all been named in honor of the host: Steagle Cobeagle the Eagle, the mascot for the minor league hockey team Saginaw Spirit; Stephen Jr., a bald eagle at the San Francisco Zoo; Stephanie Colbertle the Turtle, a leatherback turtle in the first Great Turtle Race; Aptostichus Stephencolberti, a trapdoor spider; Air Colbert, a Virgin America jet; American Dream, a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor; Esteban Colbert, a very virile falcon in San Jose; Stelephant Colbert, an elephant seal tagged as part of a study by University of California Santa Cruz; Agaporomorphus Colberti, a diving beetle from Venezuela; and a NASA treadmill called the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistant Treadmill (C.O.L.B.E.R.T.).

Stephan Colbert is an authentic brand. He has translated his agenda into a compelling Look and Message. He remains consistent in his Actions. This has earned him brand zealots—something to which all brands aspire.

There are many people who I admire—smart, funny, talented, generous people. Then there are people who align those winning traits with a strong set of moral values and act to create something brilliant. These people inspire me.

And, I’m a bit surprised to say that social media is the reason I come to write about this topic.

I began to see the power of social media to enable such inspiration when my nephew Elliot posted on Facebook that he had a birthday coming up, and if anyone was planning on giving him a gift, he would love for that gift be a donation to a charity he chose. He suggested an amount, a dollar for every year he had lived, but was grateful for any amount. He set a modest goal, which he blew past immediately. He announced a new goal. Then another. Then another. He must be a popular guy with people who like to exceed goals because he raised a lot of money from people who never intended to buy him a birthday present. Brilliant. Elliot blogs at http://goodworkpeople.com.

This is the work of Amy Krouse Rosenthal. She blogs at WBEZ in Chicago. http://www.wbez.org/blogs/mission-amy-kr and is a brilliant filmmaker and writer who inspires “connection, reflection, and creativity.” She has a mission for her followers (of which I’m one) every week. Often she asks for participation from her followers (sadly, I’ve yet to participate) from which she makes beautiful art. For the last three years (8/8/08, 9/9/09, 10/10/10) she’s invited anyone and everyone to meet her at the Bean in Chicago’s Millennium Park for an evening of “missions.” If you like life celebrations, check out her films chronicling these moving experiences.

A third example, I just found out about yesterday. Carlo Garcia has a site called Living Philanthropic: livingphilanthropic.tumblr.com. He has committed to contributing to and featuring a non-profit organization on his blog and through his tweets every day for a year, hoping that his followers will respond to the cause and also donate. I’m sorry I didn’t find him until day 314 when he featured Changing World’s, one of my clients. So far, Carlo has donated $3,753 to his featured organizations and his followers have reported donating another $9,915. Another brilliant idea.

Elliot, I know. I don’t know Amy or Carlo. Yet I have a pretty good idea of who they are. They inspire me, and perhaps elicit a bit of jealousy. But I’m glad they’re here. They give me a compelling reason to participate in social media rather than merely curse it as another distraction.

I also know, this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you have other examples like this, I would appreciate knowing about them. I would like to spread the brilliance. If you are inspired by Elliot, Amy or Carlo, spread their brilliance. These are the lights that need to shine.

My brother Jeff and I facilitated a strategic planning summit this weekend for a wonderful Chicago organization called Changing Worlds (changingworlds.org). This group teaches cross-cultural awareness in schools through literacy and the arts. Because its programs emphasize storytelling, we began our Saturday morning session with each participant telling a story about a memory that profoundly affected his or her life. On a map of the world, we charted where each of us were born and where our memories took place. The stories came from all over the world.

My, how this elevated our appreciation for each others’ background and cultures. One by one we told of life events major and minor, but always with emotion and deep personal meaning. Some were funny, some sad, all filled with poignancy.

Some insights:

Everyone has a story. Yet our major moments are so deeply woven into our fabric that we often don’t think of them as unique—they’re just “something that happened to me along the way.”

When we tell a story that’s important to us, it becomes easy to engage others. It’s as if we are giving our audience a gift. And an emotional connection is made.

My gift to you, then, is to remind you to think about a defining moment in your life. Appreciate it as unique and important. Tell it to somebody.

And, if you are growing a business…building a brand…trying to forge emotional connections with customers, don’t forget your company’s defining moments. Chances are, some of your best stories have long since been locked away in the corporate memory vault.

This year, I’m going to go from social media spectator to participant. I have had a Facebook and LinkedIn pages, which I use, but are not fully leveraged. I have a heretofore dormant Twitter account (follow me @dgreenberger). My blog, as you can see, hasn’t been all that active (one post every year probably isn’t going to cut it). I must admit this is daunting to see how I might leverage social media to build my own e-brand so that I can tell clients how to build theirs. There is so much information out there, and catching up seems like a full time job. I will keep it simple in the beginning. Ask for feedback, ideas and direction. And try to balance my two goals of learning and building a personal e-brand as a leader in creativity and change leadership (which, as I think about it, are actually quite compatible). If you are interested in becoming a participant rather than a spectator in social media, join me and we’ll learn together. If you have been at this for awhile, help guide us. I’m eager to see where this might lead us.